Police accidentally raped a man when his trousers fells down and a truncheon went up

To France, where ‘Theo’, a 22-year-old black man, claims he was raped when police inserted a truncheon in his anus. An internal police inquiry found nothing untoward. But Theo was showing severe anal injuries.

Police now says the wounding was an accident. In a video of the incident, police see a copper ‘applying a truncheon blow horizontally across the buttocks’. Theo’s trousers ‘slipped down on their own’. As such ‘there are insufficient elements to show that this was a rape’.

But an investigating magistrate disagrees. They’ve charged one of the police officers with rape.

French President Francois Hollande has taken the time to visit Theo in hospital and Prime Minister Bernard Cazenueve says their is an official state of ‘solidarity’ with the alleged victim.